STILL NO HOPE, BUT LOTS OF HATE: AND A VERY DISREPUTABLE FUNDING SOURCE

With much amusement we at NFB (Notes From the Borderland) have watched developments in the Searchlight: Hope Not Hate feud since issue 10 was published. The points below are aimed primarily at those who have already read the article in NFB issue 10. If you haven’t, buy it and do so. If you aren’t going to, sod off to Facebook/You-Tube/Twitter now...

Precisely because an anti-fascist counter- intelligence operation is ongoing, we’ll not say too much here. A few morsels though.

1) There have been frantic (and tearful) attempts to find out who NFB’s mole (s) are, without success.

-- Gerry Gable is apoplectic his correspondence with Lowles fell into our hands, in which case we give advance warning future revelations will go much further, and deeper. He’d better make sure his BUPA cover is fully paid up in advance...

--Nick Lowles et al have been frantically rushing around locking stable doors (and office doors) to little avail. The barbarians are already within the gates so to speak.

--Perhaps unfairly (or maybe not?) a kebab merchant and a sensitive petal have been fingered by HNH as likely sources. We couldn’t possibly comment....

2) The legal dispute between HNH and Searchlight is nearly resolved, just a bit of deadwood (or is that Birdwood?) to sort out and the corpses can be dragged off the battlefield.

3) Procedurally, HNH have now almost completed the process of setting up their new front companies, four in all. Of slight interest to those mugs who imagine for an instant HNH is some kind of participatory organisation, Hope Not Hate Limited (Company 8188502) incorporated 22/8/12 has no shares and only one Director (Nick Lowles). Perish the thought, what would happen should he fall under a bus? We say bus as a plane accident is unlikely: he seems to find great difficulty getting away on holiday...Does he not trust his colleagues?

4) On the propaganda front, Searchlight have been sniping away at their erstwhile comrades, and as befits their new ‘Left turn’ even giving credit to NFB’s account of the dispute in the magazine itself (September 2012 p.24). Their motives are transparent: HNH want to keep a lid on the dispute (hence their legal threats) and it suits Searchlight to air differences, not least because it shows ‘friends’ how leaky HNH is. HNH motives are clear: they want to be the only franchise in town, and this doesn't mean debate with Searchlight, but liquidating them. As for Searchlight, theirs is a dangerous game indicating desperation: what if information hypothetically (of course) came to light in future showing information leakage to NFB has been more extensive and ongoing (over a long period) than currently thought? Or is NFB just bluffing? Wait and see...

Enough of politics, let’s get down to the serious business, money.

Searchlight are in ongoing dire straits, and in July to subscribers (and at September's TUC more widely) issued a glossy leaflet asking for “£75,000 a year to continue our intelligence work, attend a range of conferences and other events, and help produce the monthly magazine”. What conferences might these be at this cost? Hollywood premieres perhaps? While denying they “pay fascists for information” close observers (‘friends’ and otherwise) know this is untrue.

For HNH the picture is almost as worrying, not least because of their far larger overheads (sitting comfortably Carl? I wouldn’t if I were you). 2011 income for HNH front Searchlight Information Services was £229,960 compared to £493,603) according to accounts submitted 31/7/12. True, outgoings are down but the current staffing level cannot continue indefinitely.

Internal HNH tensions, not least over funding, have led professional dilettante Anthony Painter to throw in his lot ever more with (call me) Matt Goodwin’s ‘Extremis Project’—like Goodwin himself so intellectually shallow they haven’t even defined extremism yet. True, 2012 has seen further (unannounced :)) funding from Unison and the DCLG, but things are still looking dicey.

Most notable earner of 2012 should have been spin-offs from the long-heralded report on the ‘Counter-Jihad’ movement, delayed because of what we can call ‘legal difficulties’. When it eventually came out, aside from proof the David Williams pseudonym isn’t the exclusive preserve of GM, the most interesting aspect was the revelation the ‘Open Society Institute’ of George Soros helped fund it. Younger readers might ask who he is, our response is he’s the kind of guy who makes Richard Brindle look like a benign philanthropist.

As people in the UK struggle through the worst recession many of us have known, it is worth remembering that for men like George Soros recessions are simply opportunities to benefit by fleecing other people (legally of course). Soros first came to public prominence in this country on 16 September 1992 - Black Wednesday - when the UK crashed out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism. This was a precursor to the Euro, only it tied currencies to the value of the Deutschmark. Soros had spotted that the pound was over-valued - Britain had gone in at too high a level, perhaps in a manner similar to that by which Greece later joined the Euro. Black Wednesday cost British taxpayers approximately £5 billion, whilst George Soros made an estimated billion pounds. He did this by borrowing sterling, converting it into other currencies, then paying back his loans once the gamble had paid off - the gamble being that the pound would be devalued. (for background on this see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2773265/Billionaire-who-broke-the-Bank-of-England.html).

That is how Soros 'earns' his money. If George Soros is an acceptable person to fund Hope Not Hate, we would really like to see an example of an unacceptable, exploitative individual. The UK state spends millions ‘protecting’ us from terrorism and various strands of 'extremism' - Soros did more economic damage than the IRA and 7/7 combined!

Over and above that though, as a rapacious capitalist, Soros wants to spend money to help buttress capitalism, and contrary to what the Right think, his foundations do exactly that (see Nicolas Guilhot, "Reforming the World: George Soros, Global Capitalism and the Philanthropic Management of the Social Sciences", Critical Sociology 33, 2007). As far as we’re concerned, however well-washed his money is dirty money, and Soros part of the problem, not the solution. How the Unison leadership and others can justify propping up the Soros/DCLG-funded HNH is one of life’s wry talking points.

In the meantime, we’re back discussing with sources, reading and researching for NFB 11, more story-lines and information always welcome...If you (rightly) thought 10 was iconoclastic, wait till 11...

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About NFB Magazine

Welcome to Britain's premier parapolitical investigative magazine Notes from the Borderland (NFB). We have been producing the magazine since 1997 but some published material before then.

Our political perspective is Left/Green, but we welcome truth-tellers, whatever their affiliation. Research interests include the secret state (MI5/MI6/Special Branch, now SO15) & their assets, including those in the media. We are resolutely anti-fascist, and to that end investigate the far right and state infiltration of various milieus. In a shallow age where many TV programmes and print/internet stories are spoon-fed to servile journalists/bloggers by shadowy interests, NFB stands out as genuine investigative research.

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